No wonder, then, that so much attention has come to Kathy Cawsey and company, four Canadian professors who have, tongues in cheeks, offered their services jointly to be the new president of the University of Alberta. In the letter of application, the kooky Cawsey crafts a case whereby the U of A gets a great deal: four actual academics, each earning a decent academic salary, all for the price of one overpaid president.

The joke is clever, because it’s hard to deny that, however hard-working a president may be, it’s hard to imagine that he or she is doing more than four professors could do. And yet, university presidents are now making salaries that are many times that of academics and, when all the perks and bonuses are added up, are sometimes in the range of a cool million dollars. What’s more, people in Canada and abroad are taking notice.